Uruguay presidential election: lvaro Delgado vs. Yamand Orsi [Video]

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay –

Uruguayans went to the polls Sunday for a second round of voting to choose their next president, with the conservative governing party and the left-leaning coalition locked in a close runoff after failing to win an outright majority in last month’s vote.

The staid election has turned into a hard-fought race between Álvaro Delgado, the incumbent party’s candidate, and Yamandú Orsi from the Broad Front, a coalition of leftist and center-left parties that governed for 15 years until the 2019 victory of center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou.

The Broad Front oversaw the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and the sale of marijuana in the small South American nation of 3.4 million people.

Orsi’s Broad Front took 44 per cent of the vote while Delgado’s National Party won 27 per cent in the first round of voting Oct. 27. But other conservative parties that make up the government coalition — in particular, the Colorado Party — notched …